A common lament (usually against Walmart) is that “Mom and Pop” stores have been driven out of business, by mega-stores and heartless corporations.  While it’s true that family owned businesses have difficulty competing against the big brick and mortar stores, the same is not true for online stores.

I do a lot of work with ecommerce stores as a freelancer, and I can tell you, “mom and pop” have gotten pretty web savvy over the years.  They now compete in niche markets, underserved by the big web retailers.  They can build a following loyal customers from around the globe, and earn enough to stay in business.  I’ve personally worked with dozens of “family owned” ecommerce stores that are doing well, or at least providing a supplemental income.

That’s one reason why proposals like this worry me.   Forcing online retailers to collect and remit sales taxes for all states they sell to would put many of these companies out of business.  They simply don’t operate on a scale big enough to support the extra cost of managing this.  Even as shopping carts get more sophisticated, the mechanics of keeping up with tax rates at the county level, then remitting the proper tax to each one, is more than a 1-2 person shop can take on.  Not to mention that there are now 50+ tax jurisdictions that can decide to “penalize” you if you are late or mess up a form somewhere.

Probably the biggest concern is the increase in cost on online products.  Bigger stores can absorb some of the tax cost, or offer lower or free shipping, but small shops would have trouble competing.  If the Internet sales tax went through, many of these small retailers would close up – the effort would no longer be worth it anymore.  Would the internet collapse?  No, not at all, but once again, we’d lose those “mom & pop” shops we all love to visit.

If you are a merchant, contractor or any other business owner who has the need to charge credit cards when you are out of the office, Authorize.net’s new “mobile app” may be for you.  Here’s a page describing the mobile app.

Authorize.net is a leading payment solutions provider, and has been a leader in e-commerce since the early days of the Internet.  They have announced the release of a new “mobile app” that allows merchants to bill credit cards using their iPhone.

You need to have a merchant account with Authorize.net to get started.  Once you download the app, you can process payments anywhere you use your iPhone.

Here are some advantages to the new app:

• Multiple Payment Types: Process real-time credit and signature debit transactions from major payment networks (e.g., Visa, MasterCard, AMEX, Discover)
• Secure Access: Integrated with the Authorize.Net Merchant Interface–merchants use their existing credentials to access the app and can validate the legitimacy of a specific device from within the Merchant Interface itself
• Flexible Settings: Set up a default tax rate, accept tips and gather shipping information when necessary
• History: Review transaction history (processed or pending) and perform voids and refunds
• Email Receipt: Merchants’ customers can receive a transaction receipt by email
• Free Support: Merchants continue to receive Authorize.Net’s award-winning customer support for the mobile app through our online support center, eTicket, email, chat and phone

This app should primarly benefit those who frequently need to accept payments while on the road – contractors, handymen, craft show exhibitors, farmers market vendors, etc.  It integrates with your normal merchant account, so all your payments go through the same system.

If you are not currently a Authorize.net customer, you can sign up for an account through our reseller form.

Google plus is the latest attempt to challenge Facebook’s social media juggernaut.  However, after initially strong growth, the service seems to be hitting a snag:
Sophomore Slump? One Month In, Google+ Sees A Traffic Minus

This underscores the difficulty in going up against a business with established traffic and users.  When even Google runs into trouble, you know it’s hard.  It’s why nobody has made a serious run at ebay in all these years.  Once users have established accounts with lots of data tied in, the switching costs are just too high to go to someone else.  It’s important to consider this when starting a business or website of your own.  Technology is not the obstacle – getting users IS, and that is the biggest challenge to overcome.

Search engine optimization is all the rage these days – everyone once their site “optimized” for keywords, content, etc. to rank highly in all the major search engines (mostly Google, though).  I’ve noticed potentially disturbing trend among several of my clients, however.  I call it “SEO paralysis”.

Here’s how is goes.  Your website is ranked fairly well in the search engines, and you are getting decent traffic from searches.  However, your site has some problems.  Customers complain about the navigation, they have trouble finding your products, for instance.  Or maybe you want to re-organize the site a bit in a way that reflects your current business.

But wait – making changes to your site *might* cause your search engine ranking to drop…so you hesitate.  You want to make life easier for your site users, but not at the expense of organic traffic.  So the paralysis sets in.  You hold off on the changes, or make very small tweaks here and there, but don’t address the real problems.

So what to do?  Well, there’s no guarantee of search engine traffic.  Even if you don’t change your site, your traffic can fluctuate based on new competition, or changes made by the search engines themselves.  But, as a consultant, I generally shy away from these situations.  I don’t want to be blamed for any changes in search engine ranking – so when a client brings that up, I back away.  Even if I think the changes will ultimately help the site, I can’t guarantee what will happen to SEO in the short run.

My advice to website owners is this – Do the right things from an SEO perspective, but never put off fixing problems with your website due to SEO concerns.  The first priority should be making your site useable and valuable to your customers.  The organic traffic will follow.  Keep in mind, that search engines are incorporating new ways to “grade” websites – so if people coming to your site can’t find what they need, your site may suffer anyway.

Keep the end user in mind, and the rankings will take care of themselves.

When you use a public wi-fi hotspot, you need to realize that most of the data you are sending is going in “cleartext”.  This means there’s the potential for a hacker to grab some personal data, such as passwords, email messages, session keys (for websites you’ve logged into), etc.  With so many applications using the internet for communications these days, even if you are careful about using “https:” when checking email, or browsing, data can leak out.

One solution is to install a VPN on your computer.  This encrypts all data on your connection, and will prevent any theft.  One such VPN is http://openvpn.net/, (OpenVPN) which is free to use.

Once you set it up, all you need to do is connect to it after you get on the WI-FI hotspot network.  Then you do all your normal web activities as usual.